By Noreen O’Connor, associate director
of Web communications, Office of Communications and
Public Affairs, AAC&U

As part of its goal to make the undergraduate experience
more global, the Institute for International Education
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has introduced
an innovative new interdisciplinary global studies bachelor
of arts degree that combines preprofessional courses
with liberal arts courses. The program is intended to
create “globally literate” students.

Tracks Lead to Preprofessional Competence

Initially conceived as a partnership between the School
of Letters and Sciences and the School of Business,
the program was later expanded with the input of over
fifty faculty members from across the university. The
new major will allow students to focus on one of five
“tracks,” or field concentrations, that
are designed to provide preprofessional competence and
to prepare students to enter professional degree programs.
Students receive a jointly conferred degree, from both
the School of Letters and Sciences and the chosen preprofessional
school. The five tracks are as follows:

Global Management—Engages
students in issues of globalization for the private
and public sectors, helps them understand the role
that globalization plays in international economic
development, and poses questions for business management
in the global economy.

Global Cities—Encourages students
to understand the global dimensions and local variations
of urbanism and architecture, the history and economy
of global cities, the causes and implications of urban
growth, and international architectural design.

Global Classrooms—Prepares
students to become globally literate educators able
to research, develop, and teach curricula with an
international dimension by emphasizing the study of
foreign languages, cultures, and globalization.

Global Security—Examines issues
that concern global security, including the causes
and effects of migration, immigration, peace, and
conflict; the environment; health and health care;
ethnicity, culture, and national identity; and policy
making and government, international law, and human
rights.

Global Communication—Slated
for fall 2005, this track will encourage students
to consider technology’s impact on human lives
on an international scale by investigating issues
of language, culture, and identity in relation to
technology, media, communications, information science,
and technology transfers.

“The liberal arts are central to the global studies
degree,” says Patrice Petro, director of the Center
for International Studies. The program curriculum is
founded on the ideals of liberal education, providing
courses that require a level of intellectual inquiry
and critical thinking that is often missed in the practicum-based
curriculum of preprofessional programs.
In addition, the program is strongly interdisciplinary,
drawing faculty and themes from multiple fields of study.
“The core courses are not owned by any one discipline,
so the courses address issues across disciplinary divides,”
says Petro. The newly created core courses, each designed
to integrate at least three disciplinary approaches,
ask both students and faculty to be versatile and creative
as they engage with complex questions related to globalization
and culture.

In the first two years, students take a three-course
global studies sequence. The first course in this sequence,
“People and Politics,” addresses global
political, historical, economic, and cultural issues
as well as demographic, linguistic, and cultural dimensions.
The second, “International Trade and Environmental
Change,” enables students to investigate the link
between international trade and environmental change,
the world economy and global monetary systems, the role
of world organizations, and the political impact of
global environmental change. The third, “Globalization
and Information Technology,” focuses on contemporary
issues in information technology, media convergences
and divisions, and the global transfer of technology.
As a supplement to the core global studies courses,
students enroll in four one-credit “Think Tank
Learning Community” courses, which provide students
opportunities for engaging their peers in projects related
to current global issues and applying new knowledge
in analyzing case studies. In addition, to prepare them
to develop their own specific area of cultural expertise,
all students take a “World Regions” course,
which is an introduction to area studies that asks students
to undertake in-depth work on geography, world politics,
or world history.

In the spring semester of their junior year, after
five semesters of language instruction, global studies
students take a semester abroad that provides a true
immersion experience in the student’s chosen language
and culture. Often, students stay in the home of a local
family while taking a semester of coursework taught
in their chosen language. Students then typically remain
in the chosen country for an international internship,
working in a language immersion environment for six
to eight weeks.

This time abroad allows students to build upon their
classroom experience and apply their newly won knowledge
in a real-world setting. “It is gratifying to
see students address the whole question of what it means
to be global in today’s world,” says Terence
Miller, director of overseas programs and partnerships
at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Capstone Project

Like all students in the UWM College of Letters and
Sciences, students in the senior year of the global
studies program undertake a capstone project. The project
allows students to synthesize their four years of study
into a practical and theoretical research project that
addresses contemporary issues related to their chosen
language, culture, and field of inquiry. For example,
a student who has focused on the global security track,
with a preprofessional emphasis on health sciences and
a language and culture emphasis on Chinese, could produce
a case study on avian flu in Hong Kong and its global
implications. In this way, students in UMW’s global
studies degree program demonstrate that they are prepared
to engage the world as globally literate graduates and
citizens.